Cut-and-Paste Comes to the iPhone: This Time For Sure!

By  |  Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 3:28 am

scissorsBack in August, a lot of iPhone users–myself included–got excited over OpenClip, a third-party attempt to bring the phone the cut-and-paste functionality that Apple has failed to deliver to date. OpenClip died before it was ever released, the victim of an attentive Apple sealing up the technical loophole that would have made it possible.

Now there’s a new grass-roots attempt to put cut-and-paste on the iPhone–one which is very different and at least as potentially promising. Pastebud will only work with Safari and e-mail messages, but that’s far from a dealbreaker, since those are the two applications you’re most likely to want to shuffle text between. (And OpenClip wouldn’t have supported them unless Apple got all kooky and jumped on the OpenClip bandwagon itself.) PasteBud is Web-based–it looks to be a form of bookmarklet–so it sidesteps the iPhone App Store altogether and doesn’t need Apple’s permission to do its work.

That’s all judging from Gizmodo’s post on Pastebud (with video demo), which also indicates that Pastebud is due on Friday and will come in both free and $5 versions. I can’t judge it until I’ve tried it–particularly just how easy it is to highlight text. But I’m looking forward to giving it a try. Even though–full disclosure–there have only been a couple of real-world incidents so far in which I’ve wanted to cut and paste something on my iPhone.

The Pastebud site isn’t up yet, but you can keep tabs on its status via Twitter.

(Running scissors art swiped from the Running With Scissors poster)

 
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1 Comments For This Post

  1. Tom King Says:

    Here’s a free, simple way to make a bookmarklet that will paste a fix string into a text field on a web form. It uses Javascript code originally developed by Erica Sadun, but pretties it up with a UI and step-by-step instructions.

    http://mobilemind.net/___
    NOTE: URL does end with 3 underscores

    or on a desktop browser, visit
    http://mobilemind.net/iphone

    This bookmarklet maker puts the current Mobile Safari URL into a new Twittelator post-
    http://mobilemind.net/__
    NOTE: That URL ends with TWO underscores.

4 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. Between the Lines mobile edition Says:

    […] functionality until an Apple firmware update closed a loophole and shut it down. As for Pastebud, Technologizer reports that it will come in both a free and $5 version and that it will be released this Friday. Beyond […]

  2. Pastebud: It Seemed Like a Good Idea! | Technologizer Says:

    […] all:&nbspNews Yesterday, I waxed enthusiastic about Pastebud, a new copy-and-paste service for the iPhone that gets around Apple’s lack of support for […]

  3. Cortar y pegar en el iPhone: BlogMoviles Says:

    […] technologizer | […]

  4. talbog.com » Blog Archive » pastebud-it-seemed-like-a-good-idea Says:

    […] I waxed enthusiastic about Pastebud, a new copy-and-paste service for the iPhone that gets around Apple’s lack of support for […]